This is just a “thank you” to those authors who have made their work available online, and you may read as much as you wish here: http://www.free-online-novels.com/
Many genres are offered, and although these artists may not be “household names” yet, I suspect they soon will be.
My personal favorite is The Strange Case of The Lost Elvis Diaries by Barry Willis. It is a sort of "film noir’ in print, with much humor added.
If this has been posted about before, please excuse the repeat, but I think these folks are just awesome to share their work with us free of charge.
Still, it is a nice avenue for sharing one’s creative works and having them read.
Back in the 70’s and early 80’s, after my radio show , I’d grab a bunch of 45 demos which had been sent to our station, go back to the production studio and just sit and listen to them, thinking I might just be the one to discover the next Beatles.
My program director thought I was nuts, but I enjoyed it, and more often than not, I took the time to send a postcard with suggestions.
And no, to my knowledge I never found the next “big thing”, but I did hear back from a few thanking me for at least listening, and that just made my day.
I’ll offer some thanks right back atcha – thank you for showing appreciation of an under-recognized genre.
The Strange Case of the Lost Elvis Diaries was one of the earliest examples of serialized online fiction, aka webseries, websoaps, webisodics, etc. Other early stars include the earliest Web sensation The Spot (note that the original series ended back in '97, and the one that’s at this URL now is a somewhat shlocky & commercialized revamp); the multi-branched workplace dramedy The Company Therapist; the longrunning (and still going strong!) websoap Footprints; and … well, modesty forbids. Even concluded or cancelled serials are often still available for reading/viewing.
As RealityChuck and LonesomePolecat mentioned, the ease of self-publication makes the Web highly seductive to the rankest of rank amateurs. The result is often just as rank. But the simplicity of publication is not the only reason some writers turn to the web. The web serial and hypertext fiction genres attract many writers who are looking to add some interactivity to their stories or experiment with rich media that’s obviously unavailable to printed books.
Those series that have been most successful usually encourage the audience/reader to dig deeper into the story, to go beyond the strict narrative structure to find treasure troves of background or additional material. (Although the even more successful series allow the audience a choice how deep inside the rabbithole they wanna go. Some readers really prefer just reading a few paragraphs of a scene without futzing around with the interactive stuff.)
Online writing is a crapshoot, to be sure. As with any form of creative endeavor, the vast majority of product is dreck. But also, as with other creative pursuits, what’s dreck to me may be dreamy to you. Chacun à son goût!
Personally I love the small trend of authors both publishing and offering their work free online. It got me reading Cory Doctorow though I disliked his last novel. As well as a few other authors.
(sheepish grin) Well, as I’ve published a few things online myself, I suppose I’m guilt of a bit of hypocrisy here. I’m not saying I’ve never read anything online that I liked; but in every case the stuff I’ve enjoyed was chosen and published by someone other than the author. Self-publishing is a very risky matter.
I have no real issues with online publication (one of my online stories got an honorable mention on Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best SF a few years ago), except for the fact that much of it is just an online slushpile. Many of the novels listed on that site are just plain unpublishable – and I use that term precisely; they are just not at a level where any reader would be interested in reading them.
Online fiction is a giant slushpile. There are a handful of gems, some utter crap, and, like any other slushpile, 80% is not horrible, but is just plain mediocre. The purpose of publishers is to weed through the slushpile and publish stories that rank near the top.
The best online stuff, as LonesomePolecat indicates, is stuff that has gone though an editorial process. The late lamented Sci-fiction had some great stories on it, since you had Ellen Datlow choosing them. Some of the smaller online magazines do a good job, too (my favorite for my Nebula ballot was published online).
But when people self-publish, then there’s no review, and the results can be awful (since every writer loves his own work).
Cory Doctorow is not a good example, BTW. He was established as an author (at least in the sense that he had sold books to regular publishers) and used his website to promote himself by giving free books. I’m betting that most of his sales in bookstores were from people who never knew he had a website, or who didn’t want to bother reading the thing off a computer/PDA screen. Still, it worked for him, but it probably would only work for one author in a thousand – or one unpublished author in a million.
You can also find online serialized audiobooks as podcasts. One source is podiobooks.com, but sometimes you have to hunt around to find them. The podiocast
I really enjoyed Earthcore by podcast novel pioneer Scott Sigler. It’s just a trashy horror/sci-fi thriller, not extremely well-written, but fast-paced and suspensful, with a very interesting premise. His next offering, Ancestor, didn’t have the same obssessed-over-and-honed-for-many-years feel to it, and the premise was a bit dull (ooooh, genetically engineered monsters break loose and attack their creators in an isolated location), but I listened to the whole thing. He has just started Infection, and is up to episode 3, if you want to jump on the bandwagon and listen to the episodes as they come out. Seems okay so far. It’s about parasites, possibly nanobots(?), that somehow make their hosts super-aggressive. Interesting, considering all the creepy research on how parasite affect their hosts’ behaviour that’s been publicized recently, plus it also hasn’t already been done to death. We’ll have to see if Sigler delivers some thoughtful speculation, a la Earthcore, or just another Ancestor-like gore-fest.
Of course, the same principle applies to online publishing of audiobooks as conventional novels. I’ve sampled three or four other podcast novels, and didn’t get past episode 4 in any of them.
Whoops, sorry about the first paragraph, there. I meant to add that the podiobooks community does a lot of cross-promotion, so in most podcasts you’ll hear ads that will expose you to some other authors.
Even concluded or cancelled serials are often still available for reading/viewing.